MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan returned to Mumbai from Berlin via London on Saturday amid threats by Shiv Sena to protest the actor for his alleged pro-Pakistan comments made recently.
A heavy deployment of security personnel drawn from the Central Reserve Police Force (SRPF) and Mumbai police was in place to protect the actor at the airport. Similar arrangements were made at his residence in Bandra. The actor was escorted to his residence by six police cars after a short press conference by the actor outside the airport.
In an editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamna on Saturday, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray snubbed Khan as a traitor.
“Shah Rukh Khan tells us to love Pakistan, but no one feels suffocated due to his treachery,” said the editorial. “Traitors do whatever you want to do with the blessings of the Congress. The Sena would not stop you. Why should the heads of Sena workers bleed and they be jailed without reasons?”
The Sena climbdown appeared to be another setback for the party and the Thackeray father-son duo.
There was some alarm in the afternoon prior to the arrival of Khan, after a Sena legislator Vinayak Raut told the media that the hard-line Hindu party would protest Khan and would not allow the release of his film. But all this appeared to be for naught with the Sena spilt on the issue.
Unfazed by the Sena threat, Khan spoke at a press conference at the Mumbai airport saying that he stands by his comments that Pakistani cricket players should have been included in the upcoming IPL and that Mumbai “is for all Indians.”
“If Mumbai was not there, an actor like me would have not been there. I’m proud to be an Indian and whatever statement I made was in line with the constitution of the country,” he said, adding that he had the highest respects for Sena chief Thackeray.
